Since SRI and Xerox invented the GUI and the mouse in the late 1970s, technology has leaped forward, but the way we interact with our computers has stood still. "10/GUI aims to bridge this gap by rethinking the desktop to leverage technology in an intuitive and powerful way."
posted by Plutor on Oct 13, 2009 - 66 comments

Seattle bus riders rejoice! From the Univ. of WA comes One Bus Away which answers the eternal public transit question "where the hell is my freaking bus??" With six flavors of awesome, you can get real-time bus arrival info. via phone, website, SMS, an iPhone-optimized webpage, or for those us still rocking the un-smart phones there's even a text-only webpage available.
posted by Smarson on Apr 2, 2009 - 42 comments

10 Futuristic User Interfaces. [...] we present 10 recent developments in the field of user experience design. Most techniques may seem very futuristic, but some of them are already reality. And in fact, they are extremely impressive. Keep in mind: they can become ubiquitous in the next years.
posted by soundofsuburbia on Aug 18, 2008 - 57 comments

It's not a bug, it's a feature: Carolin Horn has designed Anymails, which represents your email messages and folders as micro-organisms. The morphology of the individual organisms and their behaviour within colonies imparts information about the state of your email. You can view QT movies of the application in action (1, 2), download her thesis, and download the Anymails code itself. See some of her other work here (predominantly in German). via Madame Martin, the "French Metafilter".
posted by Rumple on Aug 31, 2007 - 22 comments

Computer interfaces from science fiction. Some of these interfaces (such as Minority Report) may be close to reality, while others are are being built by fans, and many more are just bad ideas. And, for reality's sake, there are also references to Windows in science fiction. See also this presentation about biometrics in science fiction [note: mp4 movie, the presentation starts about 20% in, and features Leprechaun 4: Leprechauns in space.].
posted by blahblahblah on May 2, 2007 - 43 comments

The Evolution of the Desktop 1984-2007
My oh my, how far we've come.
posted by fenriq on Aug 13, 2006 - 60 comments

Seattle Bus Monster : a project that combines the resources of Google Maps, realtime public transit data provided by the Intelligent Transportation Systems at the University of Washington, and King County's online bus trip planner and does it right. It is refreshing exhilarating to see an application designed so well. It doesn't seem to work on Safari yet. Links to project's blog and summary of features.
posted by fatllama on Jul 14, 2005 - 28 comments

A history of the GUI from the 1930s through the 90s. Also see Vannevar Bush's visionary 1945 essay As we May Think, which helped to set the wheels in motion. (Check out the Ars Technica discussion for good related links and commentary.) (via The Sideshow)
posted by madamjujujive on May 7, 2005 - 15 comments

GUI Olympics! several corporate sponsors (ATI, nVidia, and others) are offering up $15,000 in prize money for the best GUI skin any designer can come up with for a few applications. while i think it's great to push for newer and better user interfaces, who do so many of the designs seem to be pushing complexity over useability? wouldn't a better use of a GUI design prize be to encourage people to improve on a design rather than make it unintelligible? maybe the people pushing the designs need to take this quiz.
posted by caution live frogs on Apr 23, 2004 - 18 comments

"We are now deep in the trackless swamps created by thoughtless, feckless UI design — full of glitz and GUI, signifying nothing." In The Luxury of Ignorance, Eric Raymond attempts to set up a network printer in Linux.
posted by reklaw on Apr 13, 2004 - 23 comments

guidebook is chock full of interesting historical GUI miscellanea, including a chart depicting the evolution of component icons in various operating systems from 1984 to the present, a 39-page 1984 Apple ad, and a 1981 article on the Xerox Alto Computer. (via Buzz).
posted by madamjujujive on Mar 27, 2004 - 3 comments

GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface gallery. Welcome to guidebook, a website dedicated to preserving and showcasing as many Graphical User Interfaces as possible.
posted by soundofsuburbia on Mar 17, 2004 - 11 comments

So I guess it started when Jeremy Hedley made these buttons, dissatisfied as he was with the W3 Validator's default icons. Or was it Winer's white-on-orange button that did it, and the ensuing variations that appeared? In any case, we now have pixely buttons for just about everything, scripts to make even more, and GUI frontends to those scripts for fun and ease. And if you want to be kind to their servers; here's the source if you have Image::GD.
posted by brownpau on May 21, 2003 - 34 comments

Wine, Chicago, and Bob. Sounds like a dangerous combination, but fortunately the GUI Gallery keeps 'em separated for your safety. Via my good friend wysinger.com
posted by WolfDaddy on Feb 7, 2003 - 3 comments

Nethack for the rest of us. Ok, all you Nethack purists... sit on your hands for this one. Finally someone has come out with a graphical interface for the venerable ASCII game. Isometric, "Diablo" style -- Maybe it lacks some of the charm and character of the text version. At least I can see what the damn boulder and bear trap looks like. Windows/DirectX only.
posted by crunchland on May 3, 2002 - 13 comments

Not even the duckie escapes co-optation No one disputes the XP GUI is cool. "Good Artists create, Great Artists STEAL, and Real Artists Ship" [link from nofuncharlie]
posted by otherchaz on Feb 5, 2002 - 31 comments

While the father of Visual Basic tells Microsoft to: "abandon the browser", a multitude of researchers are looking into next-generation interfaces (links via Joel on Software and Wired respectively). Is the software industry even close to moving on to a new paradigm?
posted by costas on Nov 20, 2001 - 26 comments

Two months from illiterate to MP3 trading hax0rz. Very cool social experiment showing how easy today's GUIs are to use, especially for kids.
posted by skallas on Aug 27, 2001 - 12 comments

Graphical User Interface Timeline showcases the road to Aqua and it's clone XP. [via Plasticbag.org]
posted by riffola on Aug 1, 2001 - 24 comments

Screen Wars, a decent stab by Stephen Levy from Newsweek/MSNBC at summarizing the changes afoot in desktop OS GUIs. Credit where credit is due for some notable Apple alums; more faith than is justified in .NET.
posted by m.polo on Dec 5, 2000 - 14 comments

Ok, here comes the firestorm. Joel on Software has some very good things to say -- though, like most user-interface-design mavens, I think about 50% of the time that he hasn't comprehended what the problem really is... but in this piece, he's wrong.
posted by baylink on Aug 7, 2000 - 17 comments

Apple mergers with amazon.com Well not really but why is everyone copying the tab based interface... it is ugly, not expandable and assumes the end user is a complete moron.
posted by efader on Jan 22, 2000 - 0 comments

Wow, check Amazon's new holiday look. They've added even more new product lines (home improvement, software, and video games). How many folder tabs can they stuff into that navigation bar?
posted by mathowie on Nov 11, 1999 - 1 comment

Tired of killing those processes the old fashioned way? Get this Doom GUI, and never do a kill -9 without your BFG again.
posted by tdecius on Oct 27, 1999 - 0 comments